production and trade 16:1?

[SoggyShorts]

Humans: 20 Planks manufactories, 7 Scrolls manufactories, 1 Magic Dust manufactory produce the equivalent amounts of goods. With supporting residencies, workshops, and Central Places, that's 900 squares, 400 squares, or 196 squares of space respectively.

You can find many examples and calculations in this and other threads, but they all seem to line up with this one.
900 squares for planks, 400 for Scrolls, and ~200 for dust gives a "fair" trade ratio of
9:4:2, not 16:4:1

If the Developers would change the default ratio in the trader to 5:2:1 that would also work as it reflects the fact that you unlock Tier 1 upgrades first at each level.

note: This only factors in how much space you need to support production of each tier. How many of each resource is required by the game for upgrades, techs etc. is not included. The true "value" is obviously greatly effected by how many of each good you require, and even that will vary based on your style of play and the chapter you are in.

Spoiler: Old calculations

EDIT:3 Since this Thread gets bumped up to the top every couple of months I'd just like to note that I originally posted this after about 1 week of playing. Not that I'm any less of a noob now......


EDIT:2 I added in crystal for comparison

I recently became over stocked on elixir, and low on tier 1 goods, so I've been trading with some success.
On a 3h cycle
My level 8 elixir makes 400
My level 10 steel makes 230
If the "suggested" ratio is 16:1 that is 3,680 steel I could get for my elixir if traded
Granted, it cost 16x the supplies to make, but space wise would it work to build extra workshops and an extra elixir factory instead of making my own steel?
If no one else has run the numbers I can try, but I thought I'd ask here first =)

EDIT: Numbers crunched: with zero boost, 100% culture
Steel producer 3h

• 18 L10 steel and
• 1 L15 workshop
• 11 L15 residences
• 3 temple of ages
• 1026 steel produced
• -2062 supplies
• +1600 supplies
• 333 squares

Crystal producer 3h

• 13 L10 crystal
• 2 L15 workshop
• 15 L15 residences
• 3 temple of ages
• -2964 supplies
• +3200 supplies
• 741 crystal produced
• 336 squares

Elixir producer 3h

• 4 L8 elixir
• 7 L15 workshops
• 14 L15 residences
• 3 temple of ages
  
• 332 elixir produced
• -10640 supplies
• +11200 supplies
• 334 squares

So for the same space used, Elixir makes 332x16=5312 pretty much 5x the "value".
As many pointed out below, it would be selfish in a fellowship, and people may ignore your trades, but it is interesting, and I bet people might take your trades if you posted at
1 elixir for 6 steel which would still be netting you double the resources.

 

[DeletedUser1987]

There are many people who simply won't trade higher tier goods for lower tier goods. It's entirely possible that your elixir boost is high enough that you are producing more elixirs than steel.

 

[DeletedUser594]

I ignore them, as do many players. The only times those trades are helpful is when you are climbing up from lower tiers and just don't have the ability or capacity yet to make them. Otherwise they are a massive drain on Tier one goods. As an archmage I try to balance the fellowships production overall by bringing on players with certain boosts when appropriate. If enough players tried to work all or mostly 16:1 deals the trade system would suffer a great deal. Fellowships work as a team when it comes to production. I produce my boosts knowing my fellowship mates have my weakside and produce their boosts- then we all come out ahead. To produce only tier 3 and trade down would be a selfish and disruptive way to play in a fellowship.
Also because the tier three manufactories produce more per day (that's true across the board, not just in your case) you wind up with a net negative flow of tier one goods as you can't keep up if you do accept those trades.

Cheers

 

[DeletedUser3575]

I'd ignore a trade that skewed - but I DO have a great fellowship that is very well balanced and very active, so I can usually get three star trades in the same tier of goods whenever I need. This allows me to focus only on my boosted goods (as can all of my fellows) so we constantly produce as much as possible of our own items and trade as needed. I save space/manpower/culture in my city by having only boosted factories instead of a diversity of goods options, but I never seem to wait long for the other goods thanks to my fellows.

 

[DeletedUser627]

You're taking the right approach by trying to look for advantages...but the game is set so that options and advantages are really limited.

One, as said above, few will trade with you.

Two, you'd have a hard time later building enough workshops to keep the Magical goods producing, not to mention the population required.

Three, the Basic Goods will have upgrades soonest, so I'd suggest producing extra of those first. Any goods you product above what you need can be used to purchase KP. As you've probably noticed, the price of the KP goes up every time you buy it. My strategy was to first produce extra Basic goods until the price went way up, then after Fairy to produce massive extra Crafted goods for KP...and soon perhaps excess Magical goods. Essentially, it's more effective to produce each tier of good at different ages of the game.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

The fellowship I am in does not allowed skewed tier traces unless it is between 2 people that are helping each other out. It is difficult to give up a huge number of product for a very small number. To me it is asking for an unfair advantage for the person putting up that type of trade. It takes the same amount of time to produce goods. So a person with Tier one goods would have to produce for a long time in order to be able to take a trade that took someone else 3 hours.

 

[SoggyShorts]

All very valid points, thank you I edited the first post with an example

 

[DeletedUser43]

As others have said, I rarely pick up those kinds of trades. I just don't make enough tier one goods to do so even if I wanted to. As you progress, you would find even harder and harder to get those kinds of trades. Good luck trading 10,000 elixir for 160,000 steel every day.

But hey, try it. See what happens. Maybe you are in a neighborhood where that will work out well. You never know.

 

[SoggyShorts]

As others have said, I rarely pick up those kinds of trades. I just don't make enough tier one goods to do so even if I wanted to. As you progress, you would find even harder and harder to get those kinds of trades. Good luck trading 10,000 elixir for 160,000 steel every day.

But hey, try it. See what happens. Maybe you are in a neighborhood where that will work out well. You never know.

I am tempted to make a new account on another world and try it... would really suck if I couldn't get people to trade 1:6 instead of 1:16 though. Maybe there's a half way point that could be tried by just making tier 2 &3 stuff. Too lazy to math it out for now, maybe on the weekend

 

[DeletedUser3312]

I am tempted to make a new account on another world and try it... would really suck if I couldn't get people to trade 1:6 instead of 1:16 though.

Well for sure not everyone understands the game and how it works. so you may be able to sucker a few people in for a bit.

 

[DeletedUser43]

The thing is the space per good isn't at the 16 to 1 ratio. I make 232 planks per square in a 9 hour production (1857 planks in a 4 x 2 building). I make 145 gems per square in a 9 hour production (2908 in a 4 x 5 building) and I haven't even upgraded my factories to the orc level yet. That means I don't even make a two to one ratio of goods per square in planks vs gems, yet the game thinks they are a 16 to 1 ratio. The designers of the game never took the space restrictions into consideration when they came up with these price ratios: they are very poor economists. But the players all know this intuitively even if they don't know the exact numbers.

So even if you did find someone who wanted to give you all the tier one goods you asked for, they wouldn't be able to. They simply don't have the space to build all the tier one factories you need to keep you supplied. But again, you can try whatever you want.

 

[DeletedUser627]

And, in the long term game, the value of the goods becomes relative. Yes, we have them - by the hundreds of thousands, even millions.

Scouting is a slow process by Orc age, so it's easy to make the goods needed for negotiating. Catering is so expensive that even the largest cities can't really afford much of it. So, goods end up being primarily related to KP purchase.

From that perspective, the actual costs (supplies and times and space) all become relative to KP purchase. KP builds Wonders - and this is the most significant way we have to grow cities toward whatever Inno is likely planning. It doesn't really matter how,much it costs me to make goods: it only matters that I make the goods which can - in any given week / month - purchase the most KP.

You can try to get a bit of a head start on this if you start building an inventory of your Basic Goods (sorry, not the Magical ones!). You'll be able to produce more of these faster.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

My trading wall is absolutely crazy today. all 1 and 0 star trades. sigh... How kind someone is to offer me 50 dust for 5,000 steel. I can barely hold my self back. sigh... EVERY single trade, and there are 16 pages of trades for 0 and 1 star trades in crazy quantities. And people wonder why we don't trade much outside of our fellowship. It is because of the greedy lazy people that put up a ton of tier 3 factories and then expect you to support them because they don't want to take the time to do T1 factories. sigh... I am just really frustrated and ticked off by the poor sportsmanship out there!!! (just went back and there are now a few 2 star trades of t3 offers for 1 and 2T goods. still crazy skewed and I guess these people expect us to bust our hineys so they can sit back and do nothing. sigh.... color me very frustrated!

 

[DeletedUser43]

I am just really frustrated and ticked off by the poor sportsmanship out there!!!

Why? They are only hurting themselves. Look at them with pity not frustration. Or possibly they don't understand the game at all and have no clue what those stars mean. Or possibly they are being given some goods by someone in their fellowship. I do that all the time. I give away tons of goods to my fellows. Since I can't just give them for free, I have my fellows set up all kinds of zero star trades that I pick up for them. If I put up 3 star trades for them, people in the neighborhood grab them. Maybe you are seeing all kinds of generosity? Who knows.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

Why? They are only hurting themselves. Look at them with pity not frustration. Or possibly they don't understand the game at all and have no clue what those stars mean. Or possibly they are being given some goods by someone in their fellowship. I do that all the time. I give away tons of goods to my fellows. Since I can't just give them for free, I have my fellows set up all kinds of zero star trades that I pick up for them. If I put up 3 star trades for them, people in the neighborhood grab them. Maybe you are seeing all kinds of generosity? Who knows.

Good point Bobby. did not think of that. smiles.

 

[DeletedUser594]

The thing is the space per good isn't at the 16 to 1 ratio. I make 232 planks per square in a 9 hour production (1857 planks in a 4 x 2 building). I make 145 gems per square in a 9 hour production (2908 in a 4 x 5 building) and I haven't even upgraded my factories to the orc level yet. That means I don't even make a two to one ratio of goods per square in planks vs gems, yet the game thinks they are a 16 to 1 ratio. The designers of the game never took the space restrictions into consideration when they came up with these price ratios: they are very poor economists. But the players all know this intuitively even if they don't know the exact numbers.

So even if you did find someone who wanted to give you all the tier one goods you asked for, they wouldn't be able to. They simply don't have the space to build all the tier one factories you need to keep you supplied. But again, you can try whatever you want.

Yeah- it just doesn't feel right- like when a salesman is slick and you get the oogies but not sure why till you have time to break it down. I just look at what I can do with those "equivalent" goods. Right now I can negotiate a territory in my tenth ring and pay 4000 marble along with scrolls and gems- so the equivalent in gems would be what 250. But the actual negotiation price is 925 gems. And thats low.
Their ratio takes only the cost in coin and supply into account but coin is cheap. You just wait half a day, maybe go polish all your neighbors, do a few quests, ask your fellowship for help with MH. Who cares about coin? It's a stress when you're starting, and you get depleted when building a lot- but you can rebuild that lost value much quicker than you can rebuild goods.
To your point about players who just don't know- I see that in my hood and they usually come around when they get clued in to the trading- but there are some that continuously litter the trader with 1000:16000 or even much much higher- I had mentioned recently that I stepped into one of those piles of joy when I accidentally closed out one where I gave up 160,000 in planks. Quick trade clickers like me keep clowns like that posting nonsense. That was the one time I wished this game had PvP- he would've been my new hobby after not rectifying what I expressed to him was a costly mistake- even offering he keep 80k and trade me back 80k.

oh...venting- sorry- soggy this has nothing to do with you- it's totally legit to look at every strategy possible and even though many rocks have been overturned sometimes players clue into some really novel stuff so I do hope you'll keep nosing around and throwing stuff out there, its always good to have fresh eyes looking around especially with how much the game changes

 

[DeletedUser43]

smiles.

xoxo

 

[SoggyShorts]

oh...venting- sorry- soggy this has nothing to do with you- it's totally legit to look at every strategy possible and even though many rocks have been overturned sometimes players clue into some really novel stuff so I do hope you'll keep nosing around and throwing stuff out there, its always good to have fresh eyes looking around especially with how much the game changes

Thanks, I wasn't exactly expecting the sort of feedback that this thread has generated, but I'm still glad for it. I've always been a min/maxer, and there's very few games that I've played without eventually creating a few excel sheets.

There is clearly a consensus here that 16:1 is just wrong, and my (admittedly anecdotal) calculations above show it to be closer to 3:1 even factoring in culture, pop, supplies and space. I added in a crystal example just to see.

Using my numbers (but without boosts or culture bonuses)
In roughly the same space, in 3 hours you can get
1026 steel
741 crystal
332 elixir

It's just a thought exercise at this point, but it's starting to look like
9:4:3 would be more fair than
16:4:1 which is pretty nuts

 

[DeletedUser594]

Here's something that's a bit dated but mostly still accurate and an incredible piece of work:
https://tinyurl.com/elv-bunesheets

I think you may enjoy.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Here's something that's a bit dated but mostly still accurate and an incredible piece of work:
https://tinyurl.com/elv-bunesheets

I think you may enjoy.

wow, that's pretty awesome... for the record, the excel sheets I make are not nearly as detailed or well laid out. In fact when I look at old ones I can't even figure out what I was doing sometimes. "I don't need to label things, I'll remember"
Thankfully this is the age of global internet, and most of the time someone somewhere has already put a few hundred hours of effort into doing what I was about to =)